Exemplary embodiments relate generally to managing product related data, and more particularly, to systems, methods and computer program products for electronically managing requests for product related data.
Businesses often have to respond to requests for information from others in the business, including, but not limited to, legal staff, government regulations staff, and product engineering staff. Responding to a request may involve searching through large volumes of materials, including both physical papers and electronic documents. For example, legal matters often involve large volumes of information that must be organized and categorized in response to particular inquires or issues, such as litigation pleadings, business transactions, government relations, and other legal matters. The information is typically managed by a centralized organization, such as a legal department or group therein having document coordinators. Managing this legal information often requires organizing both textual information as well as documents.
One type of documentation that must be managed is product related data. Product related data is often stored in several locations and systems. This can make it difficult to effectively and consistently search large volumes of product related data in order to provide relevant material in support of legal discovery (as well as for other purposes).
Collecting product related data is often a manual process that includes the use of e-mails, telephone calls and spreadsheets created by individuals. At the beginning of product related litigation, a typical scenario involves a legal assistant contacting the engineering group and requesting documentation related to the matter at hand. The engineering group then assigns the request to a single employee who may manually search several dozen product development document repositories to identify relevant material. This material is then gathered together and provided to the requesting legal assistant, some time following their initial request. Future requests of a similar nature are handled in the same manner, often with little or no consideration given to the prior search and document retrieval. This is due to their being no common process and/or system for tracking either requests for product related data or the documents provided in response to them.
It would be desirable to be able to manage the collection and organization of product related data for responding to requests for information. Further, in response to a request for documents (e.g., for a litigation matter) it would be desirable to be able to automate the document retrieval process and to be able to replicate prior searches and document retrievals performed in the past. This would lead to more thorough searches and more consistent information being provided to the requesters.